


Loneliness is Dangerous

by musiclily88



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, Angst, Gen, New York City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 07:57:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/884858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musiclily88/pseuds/musiclily88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn and a lonely fire escape</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loneliness is Dangerous

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based entire on the Ed Vebell illustration “Loneliness Is Dangerous," which is, I believe, a companion to a piece written by Harry Coren. 
> 
> As always, I own none of this. I am yet a humble spinner of far-fetched tales. In sum: this is ficion.

Loneliness is dangerous. Zayn cannot abide loneliness. He is accustomed to solitude and quiet hours spent alone with an easel and a brush. He enjoys solitude immensely. But New York is a place built on bustling, insistent loneliness.

He knows there are people standing not twenty feet away from him in the apartment next-door, as he can hear them cooking and fighting and listening to music on their tinny radio. He knows their apartment is probably just as small and as shitty as his, yet they have somehow made theirs feel like _home_ and not just a place to chain-smoke and sleep.

Zayn sleeps a lot. He sleeps before and after work, sleeps whenever he’s not smoking or painting. Sleeping allows him to forget how ridiculously alone and lonely he is in this foreign, far-away city. Sleeping gives him a reprieve from asking himself just why he moved here and how soon he can maybe escape.

When his loneliness wakes him up at night, he drags himself off his mattress and does one of two things: he either paints, or he stands on the fire escape to look at people who know how to live.

He’s grown fond of staring into other people’s lives through their unshuttered windows, trying to suck some of the life out of their movements. He likes to watch other people smile at one another, likes to watch men make dinner for their wives or watch kids jump up and down on the sofa cushions while their parents laugh. He likes to watch his neighbors drink together with their roommates and dance on tables. Life happens to everyone all around him, and he likes to watch it and pretend he is right there, too.

He likes to lean on the metal rail of the fire escape sometimes, or he will sometimes sit and let his legs dangle out into the air. He will lose track of time so intently that he’s surprised to find his throat hurting, surprised to find the sun rising around him, shining on the skyscrapers and the full dumpsters.

Zayn doesn’t bother with an ashtray or with his cigarette butts or with anything but viewing everyone around him. He wants to trap them in amber or suspend them in liquid. He wants to take them to work with him inside his pocket. He wants to capture other people’s lives for his own.

He knows this is a selfish impulse, so he swallows it down with the cheap vodka that helps him calm down when he can’t fall asleep. He knows he has selfishness stuck down deep inside him, too deep to eradicate. He knows it just like he knows he will probably never be a famous painter, or like he will probably never fall in love again.

But this feeling has settled into him so deeply that he cannot bear to feel sorry for himself anymore. It is sometimes all he can do to drag himself out to the fire escape and light up one cigarette after another. Sometimes it is all he can do to keep himself together for another day.

So he sits and he waits and he envies the lives of those around him. He is always surprised when someone reaches out to make contact with him, whether it be as a smile or a wave or a proffered cigarette.

He is especially surprised whenever the cheerful blond from across the alleyway sits on his own fire escape and plays on a battered guitar. It starts something inside Zayn’s chest, after a time—something like hope—and Zayn thinks that hope is dangerous, too. Sometimes hope is just as dangerous as loneliness, because it is the reminder of something more.

So usually Zayn offers up a smile and gets a wave in return, but he tries to tamp down the feeling of warm hope that sits in his chest. He exhales into the darkening sky and runs through pack after pack of cigarettes, waiting for something to change.


End file.
